Lighting the Fire Back Up

I had the day off work today, so I was able to stay up extra late last night and get some work done. I've found my motivation to be somewhat lacking since I turned down that job on Monday, which I think is due to some inner turmoil going on. I'm processing it, but this was a huge decision and I don't think I would have felt like I made the correct decision regardless of what choice I made. In any event, I have to try and renew my motivation, one way or another. Usually, the best way to do this has been to change course and learn something different for a little while, to ride the wave of excitement that comes with learning a new topic or diving deeper on a different topic. Since I'm in the midst of this CS Prep course, that's not exactly an option, so I just have to dig deep. Last night, I started with searching Youtube for some JavaScript sources I haven't watched yet, and I found some videos by MPJ. In the last week, his name has come up several times and people speak very highly of his tutorials. While I do really like his style, I realized after about 30 minutes my time would be better spent working on Colt Steele and Stephen Grider's The New Modern JavaScript Bootcamp, which I still have a long way to go on before I finish it. So, I worked on the maze project for a while.

After getting my daughter down for a nap today, I got back to work on this course and finished up the maze project. I really like how it ended up, and again the code is very manageable. I feel like I could create something similar on my own, and it wouldn't be too much of a stretch of my skills. I moved on to the next project, which dealt with creating a message in an input, converting it to base64, then appending it to the end of the current URL, and finally converting it back. This was a really quick, but useful project. Anything that dives deeper on URL parameters is fairly uncharted territory for me, so I got a lot out of it. Next, we will be building a NodeJS CLI tool, which I'm really excited about. I love everything to do with the command line, and I'm dying to get better at NodeJS. I've taken several courses on Node, but working with it on the server-side coming from the frontend is really confusing and a tough leap to make. The style of code is so much different than frontend code, but it's doable. I just need more practice with it, so this should be great. Tonight, I'm doing a pair programming session with someone in my CS Prep class, in about 15 minutes. This should be a great learning experience, and I'm looking forward to working on my technical communication. I learn something every time I do a pair programming session.

In the meantime, I'm doing everything I can to get myself back out there as an active job seeker. I was on a great roll of landing interviews, and then all of a sudden, there were none. For the most part, this was due to the extra time I had while my parents were here and I was off work because of my broken ankle. Now that I'm back at work and most of my days off are focused on watching my little girl, I'm not left with much time to apply for jobs. I need to take some of the time I'm spending learning and dedicate it to applying to jobs and getting some interviews. Today and yesterday, I filled out about 20 or 30 applications, mostly in the Raleigh area. Raleigh, North Carolina is now listed as the second best city for tech-related jobs, only behind Austin, Texas. This is also where my family lives, which would be really nice, and the cost of living is one of the best in the country. All roads seem to point to Raleigh, but for whatever reason, I'm having a really hard time landing any interviews there. It may just be a lot more competitive, but I think I just need to find a better way to approach it. I think I could create a LinkedIn search of companies in the Raleigh area and then visit their sites directly to see if they are hiring. Hopefully, I have some better luck soon.

Until tomorrow!